The International Journal ofAfiican Histoncal Stut&es, Vol.

31,3(1998)

SOS

BLACK AMERICANS AND FRICA: A CRITIQUE OF THE PAN-AFRICAN AND IDENTITY PARADIGMS By Tunde Adeleke
A recurrent and familiar subject among a cross-section of the black American community, especially those of radical nationalist persuasin, is the suggestion that the most viable solution to the current crisis of black Amrica is a reviva] and strengthening of Pan-Africanism. In July 1992, at a symposium organized by the African Students Unin of Tulane University, a black American male asked the panelists, all of them Africans, to suggest how black Americans and Africans could best develop and sustain a viable Pan-African relationship as a strategy against threats posed by the political and cultural dominance of white Americans and Euro-peans. In April 1993, the Pan-African Movement U.S.A. (PAMUSA) held its annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference focused attention on the necessity and strategies for revamping Pan-Africanism. In December 1993, the epochal Seventh Pan-African Congress took place in Kampala, Uganda. Delegates from the United States, Latin Amrica, and the Caribbean met with Africans to delibrate on how to develop and sustain a strong Pan-African connection. In the last ten years, delegations of black Americans have met on severa] occa-sions with African leaders to discuss modalities for mutual cooperation and struggle. Radical cultural-nationalists bemoan what they perceive as the lack of unity among black Americans and Africans, due in large part, they suggest, to the lack of suffcient awareness and appreciation of shared histrica] experiences, cultural vales, and interests. Most critically, they lament the failure of black Americans and Africans to acknowledge the commonality of their problems and challenges. Not only do Africans and black Americans share histrica] ties, common interests, and identity, but al so, according to the cultural-nationalists, they confront common problems emanating largely from a common foeEuro-Americans. This is referred to generally as the Eurocentric threat, a threat of cultural alienation, annihilation, and perpetua] domination. This threat supposedly embraces every facet of black American and African livescultural, social, economic, and political. Eurocentrism is depicted as an ideology designed to crate a world order of white supremacy, sustained by the pains, miseries, and subordination of blacks, and Pan-Africanism is proposed as the tool for dealing with this threat. Perhaps the most distinguishing character of Eurocentrism is its glamorization of its own historical heritage and experiences, and its negation of the historicity of blacks, inducing in many blacks the loss of a sense of history, cultural heritage, and identity, rendering them vulnerable to Euro-American cultural manipulation and domination. Pan-Africanism emphasizes the unity of Africans and black diasporans in a joint struggle, a struggle ordained by the pains of the deep histrica] wounds inflicted by slavery, racism, colonialism, and neocolonialism. This faith in Pan-Africanism is reinforced by the memories and knowledge of the success of an earlier cooperation between Africans

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and black diasporans, a cooperation that was instrumental to the dismantling of colonialism. Consequently, many black Americans today believe progress depends on a reactivation of the od Pan-African cooperation. Africans and black Americans in combination would more effectively withstand the hegemonic threat of Euro-Americans in the United States and neoimperialism in frica. This essay is a critique of the Pan-African and identity paradigms most force-fully expounded and defended in Afrocentricitythe intellectual arm of the cultural-nationalist and politico-nationalist struggle within the American university system. There are several problems with both paradigms. The depiction of black Americans and Africans as one people united by cultural attributes and historical experience is seriously flawed at the levis of both theory and practice. Can black Americans truly claim African identity? Do they really share common interests and challenges with Africans? Have they been drawn together historically by shared experiences? In other words, has there always been a Pan-African tradition? If so, how od is it? These are pertinent questions whose answers compel a reconceptualization and reassessment of the historical focus of the relationship and experience of Africans and black Americans. There are two critical dimensions to Afrocentricity. The frst is its Pan-African character. It emphasizes similarities in the historical and cultural experiences of black Americans and Africans and implores them to revive the od strength-in-unity philosophy that once shaped their mutual struggle. Advocates of this Pan-African ethics maintain that black Americans and Africans face similar problems and challengeseconomic marginalization, political domination, and cultural alienation in the United States; political instability, poverty, and neocolonialism in frica; all problems directly or indirectly linked to Eurocentrism. Afrocentrists presume a certain antiquity to Pan-Africanism, and trace its roots to the nineteenth century and beyond. Pan-Africanism is depicted as a movement shaped by a deep conscious-ness of mutualitythat black Americans and Africans had always been drawn together by common interests, and that they had always stood together in further-ance of those interests. The second dimensin is the identity claimthe contention that Africans and blacks in diaspora are one people who share cultural (and some even suggest, ethnic) attributes, centuries of separation notwithstanding. Undoubt-edly, the leading advcate of Afrocentricity is Molefi Asante, former chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Temple University. His numerous publications, especially the earlier ones written in the 1980s, testify to the depth and strength of his faith in Pan-Africanism.1 Asante identifes one major threat to blacks in AmricaEurocentrism. According to him, this problem has been with blacks since the dawn of history and has remained intractable in spite of emancipation and the gains blacks had accomplished through the decades. Eurocentrism remains a potent threat to the cultural, social, economic, and political survival of blacks. To combat this spreading cncer, he proposes Afrocentricity.2 This solution entails strengthening black American knowledge and awareness of their African historical

Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity (Trenton, N.J.,

1988); The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia,

1987). 2 See also Molefi Asante, Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge (Trenton, N.J., 1990).

BLACK AMERICANS AND FRICA

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and cultural heritage by making frica the foundation of black American epistemol-ogy. The objective is to instill in blacks an awareness of their Aftican identity and culture as a defensive weapon against a pervasive and domineering Eurocentric world view. Afrocentricity involves re-education and re-socialization designed to rid black American consciousness of the "tragic conception" of their history, culture, and heritage. It is supposed to bring blacks closer to frica as they develop in knowledge of frica.3 Asante is not the sol proponent of the cultural-nationalist perspective. Others, including Maulana Karenga, Na'im Akbar, Amos Wilson, Dona Marimba, and the late Bobby Wright, have all contributed to explicating and defending the Afrocentric perspective. In numerous arricies and books, Karenga established and defended the historicity of the Aftican and black diaspora experience, and contines to contribute to scholarly discourse on issues critical to the experience. His most enduring con-tribution, however, lies in the rea of culture. He is credited with founding Kwanza, which has become a popular cultural event among black Americans.4 Amos Wilson's scholarship strikes at the very heart of Eurocentric historiography, exposing its misrepresentations of, and damages to, the historical consciousness and heritage of blacks.5 Dona Marimba has equally been critical of the influence of Eurocentric civilization. Her most recent work Yurugu is a massive exposition and critique of the hegemonic character of the European world view. She is also among the most ardent defenders of the identity paradigm.6 Psychologists Na'im Akbar and Bobby Wright deal with the denigrating and hegemonic effects of Eurocentric vales on the mental and psychological balance of blacks.7 The late Vivian Gordon is hailed by Afrocentrists as perhaps the best representative of the black womanist perspective, a critique of feminism. Though aware of the contributions of other black feminists such as bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Patricia Hill Collins, who have also been critical of the Afrocentric tendency to essentialize race to the neglect of sex and class, Afrocentrists applaud the perspective advanced by such Afrocentric critics of feminism as Vivian Gordon, Kariamu Welsh Asante, and Dona Marimba.8 In fact, Gordon's pamphlet Black Women, Feminism and Black Libera^ Ibid. See 2i* Molefi Asante, "The Afrocentric Idea in Education," The Journal of Negro Education, 60, 2 (1991); "On Historical Interpretations" and "On Afrocentric Metatheory" in his MalcolmXas Cultural Hero & other Afrocentric Essays (Trenton, N.J., 1993). 4 Maulana Karenga, Introduction to African American Studies, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles, 1993). See also his "Corrective History: Rewriting the Black Past," The First World, 1, 3 (May-June 1977); Kawaida Theory: An Introductory Outline (Los Angeles, 1980); Kwanza: Origins, Concepts, Practice (Los Angeles, 1977). ^ Amos N. Wilson, The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness: Eurocentric History, Psychiatry and the Politics ofWhite Supremacy (New York, 1993). " Dona Marimba, Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior (Trenton, 1994). Also see her Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora (Trenton, 1980). ' Na'im Akbar, Chains and Images of Psychological Slavery (Jersey City, N.J., 1984); Bobby E. Wright, The Psychopathic Racial Personality and other Essays, rev. ed. (Chicago, 1994). 8 Sidney J. Lemelle, "The Politics of Cultural Existence: Pan-Africanism, Historical

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tion: Which Way? remains the reference source on the black womanist perspective for many Afrocentric scholars and students. Gordon contends that black women and white women have nothing in common besides gender and that gender oppres-sion, however real, does not constitute a sufficient basis for black women to coop-erate with white women.9 In terms of interests and culture, the two are incompatible, according to Gordon. She denies that black women have any business partici-pating in feminism. Gordon characterized the analysis of gender at the core of struggle as a ploy to hoodwink black women into an engagement that would even-tually result in cultural suicide. Regardless of how vocal white women were against gender discrimination, they remain part of the white power structure that has exploited, and contines to exploit, blacks.10 In other words, white women constitute an arm of the white cultural war against all blacks. As wives, sisters, and mothers, white women perform crucial functions in the inculcation and perpetuation of racist vales and thus perpetate white cultural hegemony. Gordon consequently deemed cooperation with white women dangerous for black women. Instead, she advised black women to forge greater ties with their male counterparts in the United States, and with African and Third World women with whom they share common interests and challenges. 11 Gordon's Pan-African paradigm, like that of Asante and other Afrocentric scholars, advances a conspiratorial theory that discerns threat to blacks in conspiracies allegedly concocted by "Others"white Americans and Europeans. All the scholars cited above subscribe to and defend the Pan-African and iden-tity paradigms. They are intellectual Pan-Africanists whose writings underline conflict, divergence, and discord between two opposing world views, African and European. Asante, however, remains the most articlate and accomplished defender of both paradigms. His spirited defense is encapsulated in the ideology of Afrocen-tricity. As indicated, Afrocentricity developed as a response to the intellectual challenges and perceived threat of a mainstream historiography that was deemed Eurocentric. It is premised on a reconstruction of African history and the experience of peoples of African descent abroad with a view to debunking prevailing historical fallacies and misrepresentations. Its ultimate objective is to build and enhance black self-esteem and induce positive self-conception. Confronting, combatting, and debunking entrenched Eurocentric assertions and vales that have served to deni-grate, objectify, and negate the black historical experience is central to Afrocentric epistemology. Asante has written articles, books, and pamphlets on virtually every aspects of the black experience. His writings, along with those of other Afrocentric scholars, are very critical and revisionist, reconstructing the African and black dias-pora experience from an "African perspective," a context that situates Africans and blacks as historical actors, highlighting the positive accomplishments and realities
Matenalism and Afrocentricity," in Sidney L. Lcmelle and Robin D. G. Kclley, eds., Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (New York, 1994), 335.
9

Vivian Gordon, Black Women, Feminism and Black Liberation: Which Way? (Chicago,

1991). Olbid.
11

Ibid.

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of their history.12 The entire Afrocentric paradigm is shaped by a strong faith in the potency of Pan-Africanism. Afrocentricity seeks to strengthen cultural awareness and unity among blacks in the United States, and also to infuse in them knowledge and appreciation of their historical identity and heritage as a distinct group. It proposes frica as the source of self-definition, self-affirmation, and identity for blacks in the United States and throughout the diaspora. In essence, Afrocentricity identifies African culture and vales as the solid foundation upon which to build a strong resistance against the onslaught of Euro-American cultural and political hegemony.13 Asante emphasizes "confraternity and continuum" as the defining character of the relationship between Africans and black Americans, a relationship that he portrays as essentially and historically Pan-African.14 He conceives of Pan-Africanism as "a political perspective and a political ideology as well as a social theory. The one does not negate the other. Actually when we speak of the political dimensin of the concept, we are also talking about how Africans see themselves as social units."15 Afrocentricity represents the social expression of the Pan-African ideology. Its primary function is to assist in bringing to fruition the "collective consciousness** that is the essence of Pan-Africanism. The attainment of this Afrocentric consciousness by blacks constitutes the foundation for the flowing of Pan-Africanism. Asante stresses the importance of this collective consciousness. It is the level at which Africans and blacks in diaspora manifest "shared commitment, fraternal reactions to assault on [their] humanity, collective awareness of [their] destiny....** 16 This Afrocentric state combines awareness with action. As he con-tends, "There can be no effective discussion of a united front, joint action, a community of interests until we come to good terms with collective consciousness, the elementary doctrine of economic, political, and social action.**17 Pan-Africanism is central to the Afrocentric paradigm. Afrocentrists are proud of their supposed state of mental decolonization, a consciousness borne of a radical revisin and reinterpretation of African and black history. The entire Afrocentric paradigm is geared toward the development and defense of a new historiography focused on frica, one that articulates a history more in sync with the African and black experience. In Afrocentric historiography, Kemetic Egypt serves as the cornerstone of African, and indeed, via Greece, world history. This history is defi-nitely positive and capable of enhancing black self-esteem. A dominant theme in Asante* s writings is the glorious and accomplished character of the African historical past. Asante is not just defending the historicity of the African and black experience, but he has situated that experience at par with, if not above, Western/ Euro-pean civilization, in terms of heritage, accomplishments, and contributions to humanity's growth. Most significantly, his works underscore the depth and ubiql 13

Asante, Afrocentricity, Kemet. See also Oba TShaka, The Art ofLeadership (Richmond, Calif., 1990).

'4 Asante, Afrocentricity, Chs. 3, 4.

15 16 17

Ibid., 65-69. Ibid., 26. Ibid., 30

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uitous nature of the Pan-African ethos. However, as many critiques have pointed out, such history is essentially bad history, steeped in myth-making and dubious claims of originality.18 Asante's "African perspective," however, sustains a roman-ticized, abstract, and idealized frica, emphasizing a nonexistent harmony and consensus. There is emphasis on glorious accomplishments while neglecting to deal critically with the contradictions and ambivalence. Many scholars have criticized the Afrocentric rendition of African and black history, particularly its tendency to romanticize and misrepresent the African and black American past, and to elvate ideology over scholarship.19 As Sidney Lemelle contends, "Anyone who has seri-ously studied African history ... realizes that a multitude of attitudes and cosmolo-gies produced many African culturesnone of which were 'universal.' frica is made up of people from different ethnic, religious, and linguistic groupings."20 In correcting histrica! fallacies, therefore, Afrocentric historicism tends to assert pseudohistorical claims, crate myths, and often to engage in a reductionism that oversimplifies the complexity of African and the black diaspora experience. Two critica! reas of such oversimplification and reductionism relate to the Pan-African and identity constructs. Afrocentric writers and scholars have a tendency to view Pan-Africanism rather uncritically, as a movement that reflected the inherent unity and harmony of frica and black diaspora relationship. Afrocentric Pan-Africanism rests on the presumption that Africans and black diasporans possess a harmonious and consensa! histrica! relationship. Implicit is the contention that both share an unbroken chain of history, culture, and identity. A survey of the historical devel-opment of that relationship is pertinent in order to ascertain the profundity and authenticity of the Pan-African and identity paradigms as defned and defended in Afrocentric historiography. There is no consensus on the definition of Pan-Africanism. Some scholars portray it as essentially a politico-nationast phenomenon contrived to effect the unity of Africans and blacks in diaspora in a common struggle for mutual advance-ment and redemption. Others emphasize its cultura! dimensin, portraying it as the expression of a trans-Atlantic black cultural unity. There is agreement on severa! of its essential elements, however. P. Olisanwuche Esedebe identifies the following essentia! attributes: the notion of frica as a homeland for persons of African descent, solidarity among Africans and peoples of the African diaspora, belief in a distinct African personality, rehabilitation of Africa's past, pride in African culture, and the hope of a united and glorious African future.21 He defines Pan-Africanism as

18 Dennis Hickey and Kenneth C. Wylie, An Enchanting Darkness: The American Visin of frica in the Tweneth Century (East Lansing, Mich., 1993), 308-18; Clarence Waiker, "The Distortions of Afrocentric History," in John J. Miller, ed., Alternatives to Afrocentrism (Manhattan, 1994), 32-36; Sidney J. Lemelle, "The Politics of Cultural Existence," in Lemelle and Kelley, eds., Imagining Home, 334-36.

*9 See the scholars named in the previous footnote. 20 Sidney J. Lemelle, "The Politics of Cultural Existence," 336. 21 P. Olisanwuche Esedebe, Pan-Africanism: The Idea a/id Movement, 1776-1991, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C., 1994), 4.

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a political and cultural phenomenon that regards frica, Africans, and Afri-can descendants abroad as a unit. It seeks to regenrate and unify frica and promote a feeling of oneness among the people of the African world. It glorifies the African past and inculcates pride in African vales.22 The notion of shared identity between blacks in diaspora and Africans, efforts towards mutual upliftment, development, and defense of mutual interest are at the heart of Pan-Africanism. The contention that blacks in diaspora and Africans share historical experiences and ought to unite in the face of compelling and overwhelm-ing adversity is historically rooted. From the very dawn of the black American experience, blacks had nursed and nurtured this feeling, frequently invoking African vales and institutions in defense of their struggles. In the nineteenth century, free blacks in northern cities such as New York, Bostn, and Philadelphia frequently invoked African vales in their struggles for survival. Many were propelled by the feeling of affnity with Africans to advcate programs for mutual elevation. Among the pioneers of this Pan-African tradition were Pal Cuffee (1759-1817) and Lott Cary (1780-1828), who, very early in their lives, expressed interest in helping to redeem frica from poverty and moral degradation. A Quaker of mixed Negro and Indian heritage, Cuffee was one of the earliest to draw a link-age between the experience of black Americans and Africans. In his estimation, blacks, regardless of geographical location, could not hope for meaningful advancement unless and until frica was developed. He urged black Americans to engage in partnership with philanthropists and governments in the United States and Britain for the development of frica.23 Cary also took up the cause of frica, insisting that black Americans had a responsibility to contribute to the development of the continent.24 Both men saw promise for the future of Africans and black Americans in the encouragement of colonization and commerce in frica. They invoked the African linkage as a means of nurturing a sense of responsibility toward frica among black Americans and inspiring a commitment to the elevation of the continent. Other blacks emphasized the African connection as a means of generating a collective consciousness among blacks, a consciousness considered crucial to group survival in a hostile environment. One such was David Walker, who is acclaimed by some as the father black nationalist theory. His Appeal to the Colorea Citizens of the World (1829), has been described as one of the earliest articulations of Pan-African consciousness among black Americans.25 Walker wrote the book not only as a critique of slavery and racism, but also to inspire a collective sense of obligation and responsibility among blacks for mutual salvation. Other blacks, among the more enlightened and educated, manifested their African consciousness by engaging the intellectual biases of their timesthe denial and denigration of the

22 23

Ibid., 5. Henry N. Sherwood, "Pal Cuffee," The Journal of Negro History, 8 (April 1923).

^ Miles M. Fisher, "Lott Cary: The Colonizing Missionary," The Journal of Negro History, 7 (Octobcr, 1922).
25

Charles M. Wiltse, ed., David Walker's APPEAL (New York, 1991).

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black and African historical past and heritage, and the negation of the black diaspora historical contributions. This group included James W. C. Pennington, William Wells Brown, William C. Nell, George Washington Williams, and Martin R. Delany. The second half of the nineteenth century was perhaps the most critical phase in the development of Pan-African consciousness. Prompted by the elusive charac-ter of the American Dream, leading blacks mobilized Pan-African consciousness and sought the realization of a new nationality and identity through cooperative endeavors between Africans and black Americans. The height of this Pan-African tradition carne in the mid-nineteenth century with the emigrationist tradition spear-headed by Martin R. Delany. Frustrated by the persistence of racism, Delany began to advcate a return to frica and the development of a black and African nationality. From 1852 to the outbreak of the Civil War, he persistently advocated a new nationality for blacks built on cooperation between blacks in diaspora and frica, who supposedly confronted critica! challenges to their existence as a people from European civilization.26 Delany drew the racial boundary line, delineating the strug-gle as one between blacks and whites. Long before W.E.B. Du Bois, Delany had emphasized the pertinence of the color line. Race was in fact the basis of his Pan-African ideology. As he boldly declared "It would be duplicity longer to disguise the fact the great issue, sooner or later, upon which must be disputed the world's destiny, will be a question of black and white."27 For much of the 1850s and early 1860s, Delany steered the emigrationist and black nationality movement, along with other black nationalists as Henry H. Garnet, J. Theodore Holly, William H. Day, and M. H. Freeman. Their plan was to resettle a few wealthy and enterprising free blacks in frica who would develop a strong economy patterned on the cotton-rich South. The success of this economy, they hoped, would eventually undersell American cotton on the international market, rendering slavery uneconomical and superfluous. Most critically, this nationality would serve as the rallying point for blacks throughout the world in their struggle against domination and exploitation. Delany traveled to frica in 1859 and spent a little over a year visiting communities in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other parts of the West coast.28 The outbreak of the Civil War unsettled Delany's movement as he himself became seduced by the liberal and democratic promises of the war. The next phase of Pan-Africanism occurred in the 1880s and 1890s, led by Henry Turner and Alexander Crummell. Each, in different ways, attempted to make Pan-Africanism the basis of responding to the challenges of blacks in frica and the diaspora.
Martin R. Delany, "Political Destiny of the Colored Race on the American Continent," in Frank Rollin, Ufe and Public Services of Martn R. Delany (Bostn, 1868), 327-67; Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization (Urbana, 111., 1975); Cyril E. Griffith, The African Dream: Martin R. Delany and the Emergence of Pan-African Thought. (University Park, Penn., 1975).
27 t>

Delany, "Political Destiny," 335.

2 Miller, Search for a Black Nationality; Griffith, African Dream. See also Martin R. Delany and Robert Campbell, Search For a Place: Black Separatism and frica, 1860 (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1969); Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States [1852] (Baltimore, 1993).

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Frustrated by the collapse of the promises of Reconstruction, Turner embraced emigration. He gave up completely on Amrica and urged blacks to seek their destiny in a new nationality in frica. His language grew increasingly harsh, anti-white, and anti-European. Like Delany before him, Turner predicted doom for blacks in white society. frica provided the basis for regeneration and for the construction and consolidation of a new nationality and identity. Turner made severa! trips to frica in the 1890s in pursuit of his black nationality scheme.29 Inspired by his Christian upbringing, Crummell envisioned a Pan-African Christian community of Africans and black diasporans. He expressed pride in his African ancestry and dedicated himself to the uplifting and redemption of frica. His writ-ings and public lectures underscored the experiential and identity linkage between frica and black diaspora, and implored black Americans to become more actively involved in the elevation and development of Africans. He soon moved to Liberta where he became actively involved in the spread of literacy, Christianity, and "civilization" among the indigenous people.30 Delany, Turner, and Crummell all spent time in Liberia and traveled extensively in other parts of the west coast of frica. They were all driven by the failure of the promises of the American Dream, to which they had subscribed, and concern over the global advance of racism and imperialism. The second half of the nineteenth century coincided with the germina-tion of the greatest challenge to Pan-Africanismthe strengthening of European imperialism. Delany, Crummell, and Turner consequently shaped the course of Pan-Africanism at a very crucial period. The next major phase in the growth of Pan-Africanism coincided with the emergence to prominence of Marcus Garvey in the early twentieth century. Garvey espoused a strong cultural-nationalist brand of Pan-Africanism. He appealed to race and envisioned a glorious future for blacks in frica. The appeal to return to frica generated a massive response. Garvey offered a strong organizational base within his United Negro Improvement Association. The promise of a future in an inde-pendent frica was alluring to a black American populace entrapped in a vicious circle of poverty, violence, and despair. Like Delany and Turner, Garvey empha-sized the racial boundary line and expressed disdain and hatred for imperialism and for European vales and influences.31 Garveyism flowered within the same histori-cal epoch as other Pan-African traditions, most notably the Pan-African Congress Movement. William E. B. Du Bois was part of the intellectual movement among black Americans in the early twentieth century with a strong Pan-African over2y Edwin S. Redkcy, Black Exodus: Black Nationalism and Back-to-frica Movement, 1890-1910 (New Haven, Conn., 1969). Scc also his cditcd collcction, Rsped Black: The Writings and Speeches of Henry McNeal Turner (New York, 1970); and "Bishop Turner's African Dream," in Okon Uya, ed., Black Brotherhood: Afro-Americans and frica (Lcxington, Mass., 1971).

Grcgory U. Rigsby, Alexander Crummell: Pioneer in Nineteenth-Century Pan-African Thought. (Wcstport, Conn., 1987); Wilson J. Moscs, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925 (New York, 1978). Sce also his Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent (New York, 1989). 31 Rupcrt Lcwis, Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion (Trcnton, N.J., 1988); Rupert

Lewis and Patrick Bryan, eds., Garvey: His Work and Impact. (Trcnton, N.J., 1991).

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tonethe New Negro History movement. This movement was spearheaded by a "New Negro/* an intellectual and dynamic personality, who was driven by the resilience and entrenchment of racism to fght back with the weapon of history. There were determined efforts to rediscover the African heritage, to reaffirm its historicity and authenticity, and most critically to define an identity.32 E>u Bois emphasized the roles and contributions of blacks in American society, challenging the hegemonic thrust of American historical scholarship. Along with Crter G. Woodson and members of the New Negro History Movement, Du Bois mounted a strong intellectual defense of the historical wealth, resources, and heritage of blacks in frica and abroad. Du Bois would later move from his intellectual defense of African and black American history to become a forc in the evolution of Pan-Afri-canism as a movement. The Pan-African Congress tradition that began in 1900 (some trace its origin to the late 1890s and beyond), achieved tremendous success in harmonizing black diasporans with Africans in a joint struggle for mutual advancement against colonialismo racism, and imperialism. Five Pan-African Congresses resulted from this tradition, spanning the period from 1900 to 1945. These congresses were organized by representatives of Africans and black diasporans including Du Bois, Henry Sylvester Williams, Edward Wilmot Blyden, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, and J. E. Casely-Hayford. They were all drawn together by the consol idation of colonialism and the global trajectories of imperialism and racism. Shared experience and the conviction that all blacks confronted similar problems shaped the delibera-tions of the congresses.33 After the Fifth Congress in 1945, no congress was held until the Sixth in 1974 in Tanzania. This post-independence congress revealed the growing complexity of the Pan-African movement. Though the common enemy (and rallying point), colonialism, was dead, it was clear to some that a new foe had emerged. A controversy ensued between two perspectives, one defended by an American delgate, the other, a Marxist perspective advocated by the late Walter Rodney. The black American dele-gation carne to defend a race agenda and platform, insisting that Africans and black diasporans confronted similar challenges emanating from racism. According to a spokesman, "There is nothing metaphysical about defning the white race as the traditional enemy of the black race."34 Walter Rodney, a West Indian who had studied African history at the University of London, and was then lecturing at the University of Dar es Salaam, had profound knowledge of, and familiarity with, the crises of African political economy and leadership. Rodney was a Pan-Africanist of a completely different ilk. He envisioned Pan-Africanism "not as a utopian blueprint

DarleneClark Hie, ed., The State of Afro-American History: Past, Present and Future. (Baton Rouge, LA, 1986); August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, eds., Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (Urbana, 111., 1986); Earl E. Thorpe, Black Historians: A Critique (New York, 1971); Sterling Stuckey, "Twilight of Our Past: Reflections on the Origins of Black History," in John A. Williams and Charles F. Harris, eds., Amistad 2 (New York, 1971). " Esedebe, Pan-Africanism\ J. Ayodele Langley, Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West frica, 1900-1945 (Oxford, 1973).

34

Haki Madhubuti, Enemies: The Clash of Races (Chicago, 1978), 70.

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of a priori racial unity, but rather as the means of forging empirical entena for assessing the social bases of contemporary African and Caribbean states and the function of their structural integration within the world capitalist system."35 Rodney warned of the pitfalls of "romantic visions" about contemporary frica.36 In stern terms, he declared, "We have allowed illusions to take the place of serious analysis of what actual struggles are taking place on the African continent; what social forces are represented in the government and what is the actual shape of society."37 For Rodney, therefore, Pan-Africanism "was a critical tool for analyzing revolutionary new forms for genuine African liberation."38 It ought to be directed not solely at some external foe, but also at the neocolonial and domestic exploiters and perpetra-tors of the moral and political decadence that plagued frica.39 For Pan-Africanism to be effective, Rodney intimated, it had to move beyond race to class analysis. Rodney consequently advocated a Marxist perspective or class analysis in opposi-tion to the racial perspective proposed by the American delegation. He wanted Pan-Africanism directed against the exploiter class, whoever exploited blacks/Africans and circumscribed their opportunities, regardless of race or color, both within frica (that is, indigenous exploiters) and outside.40 A radical divergence on the definition of the basis of Pan-Africanism was also evident in the deliberations of the Seventh Congress in Kampala in 1993. Regardless of the controversial and increasingly complex character of Pan-Africanism, the congress movement did underline the pervasiveness of the feeling of oneness among black diasporans and Africans. The underlying assumptions binding Afri-cans and black diasporans in the Congress tradition was the conviction of shared history, culture, and heritage. The tradition activated the nationalist impulse and movements that eventually toppled colonialism in frica and other parts of the world. This success was soon injected into the civil rights movement in the United States by the likes of Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. Malcolm saw Pan-Africanism as a means of injecting strength and vitality into a movement that was becoming increasingly localized and subverted within the United States. For Malcolm, unity between frica and black Amrica was needed for the mutual upliftment and redemption of both.41 Stokely, who later changed his ame to Kwame Toure, envisioned Pan-Africanism as the "highest expression of Black

-" Robert A. Hill, "Walter Rodney and the Restatement of Pan-Africanism in Theory and Practice," in Edward A. Alpers and Pierre-Michel Fontaine, eds., Walter Rodney: Revolutionary andScholar, A Tribute (Los Angeles, 1982), 85.
36 37 38

Ibid., 85. Ibid. Ibid.

39 ibid.
40 41

"The Black Scholar Interviews: Walter Rodney," The Black Scholar (November 1974).

Oba T'Shaka, The Political Legacy of Malcolm X (Richmond, Calif., 1983); Malcolm X on Afro-American History (New York, 1970);George Breitman, ed., Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary (New York, 1970) Abdul Alkalimat, ed., Perspectives on Black Liberation and Social Revolution (Chicago, 1990).

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Power. Black Power means that all people who are black should come together, organize themselves and form a power base to fight for their liberation."42 Under-lining the centrality of frica, he declared, "We must make frica our priority. We must deal clearly now with frica and begin to support the movement for liberation on the continent."43 There is no doubt therefore that a strong PanAfrican con-sciousness pervaded the outlook of blacks in the diaspora. Regardless of the harsh realities they confronted, black Americans did not forget their African ancestry. This Pan-African consciousness, however, remained "apolitical," and did not assume the character of an ideologically driven movement until the twentieth century.44 A critical examination of the history of Pan-Africanism, particularly of the strategies devised by leading black American nationalist for implementing the Pan-African ideal, reveis a deep cultural distance and alienation from fricaa conse-quence, no doubt, of the acculturation process in the New World. There existed a critical cultural gulf between Africans and black Americans submerged beneath the veneer of Pan-Africanism, a gulf that has only widened with the passing of time. Early Pan-Africanists such as Pal Cuffee and Lott Cary acknowledged their African roots, expressed concern for frica, and proposed schemes for the economic elevation of frica. Cary once declared himself "an African," observing that "in this country [i.e., the United States], however meritorious my conduct, and respectable my character, I cannot receive the credit due to either. I wish to go to a country where I shall be estimated by my merits, not by my complexin; and I feel bound to labor for my suffering race."45 Here is a strong affirmation of his Pan-African consciousness. However, in his farewell sermn at the First Baptist Church in Richmond in January 1821 just before embarking on a trip to frica, Cary closed with "I long to preach to the poor Africans the way of life and salvation. I don't know what may befall me, whether I may fnd a grave in the ocean, or among the savage men, or among the savage wild beasts on the coast of frica."46 [emphasis added]. Here we hear echoes of the prevailing racist perceptions of frica. Pal Cuffee dedicated himself to the redemption of frica. His ultimate objective was to establish a colony in frica for settlement of black Americans with a view to abol-ishing slavery, exploring frica, and exposing Africans to civilized life. Though both men expressed pride in being of African ancestry, and felt a genuine desire to initiate contact between black Americans and Africans, Cuffee and Cary also imbibed the prevailing paternalistic and racist culture and world view that later unleashed the colonization impulse. They embraced the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century missionary and Eurocentric construction of frica, a condition that ultimately launched the mission civilisatrice, ostensibly to rescue the continent
4 Stokely Carmichael, Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism (New York, 1971), 202. 43 44

Ibid., 205.

St. Claire Drake, "Diaspora Studies and Pan-Africanism," in Joseph E. Harris, ed., Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora , 2nd ed. (Washington, D. C, 1993), 451-55.
45 46

Fisher, "Lott Cary," 389. Ibid., 391.

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from "darkness and barbarism." However forceful their proclamation of interest in, sympathy for, and identity with, frica, these pioneer Pan-Africanists were equally products of a particular historical epoch, and their ideas reflected the prevailing cultural biases of that epoch. From the birth of organized abolitionism in the early nineteenth century to the present, frica had always served black Americans as a basis for articulating identity and inspiration in the struggle for freedom and survival. The tendency by Afrocentrist scholars to inject some mutuality or consensual ethos into the historical relationship of Africans and blacks in diaspora, however, misrepresents the reality. Such a tendency ignores the complexity of the relationship. A critical look at the crucial nineteenth century will illuminate the contradictions within black American nationalist and Pan-African thought. While black diasporans espoused Pan-African ideis and expressed a desire to identify with Africans, their activities betrayed their cultural alienation from frica. Their expression of cultural identity was unambigu-ously Eurocentric; they opted to shape frica according to the images of Europeans. Delany, Crummell, and Turner were in frica in the crucial period from 1850 to the 1890s, when European powers began gradually to change their policies from one of a low-keyed presence on the African coast to intrusin into the continent that would end in colonization. It was a momentous epoch in African history as Europeans debated how to go about implementing this aggressive new policy of displace-ment and occupation. In different ways, Delany, Crummell, and Turner contributed to the making of this decisin. On a visit to Britain in 1861, Delany persistently urged the utilization of forc against Africans to stem the tide of what he presented as the endemic crisis among indigenous African states, crisis that he insisted inhib-ited the orderly and peaceful flow of legitimate commerce.47 He deplored what he perceived as the barbarie customs of Africans and urged European missionaries to re-socialize Africans and steer them away from indigenous traditions and modes of living.48 Crummell repeatedly referred to Africans as restless, violent, and crude people against whom the use of indiscriminate forc was legitimate.49 Violence was for him a viable and legitimate weapon of taming the wild barbarism of indigenous frica, and he implored the British not to be held back by considerations of democ-racy or justice in forcibly subduing Africans.50 For Crummell, no price was too high for Africans to pay in return for the benefits of European civilization. He advocated the systematic re-education of Africans in Anglo-Saxon vales.51 Delany, Crummell, and Turner made those critical concessions at a time when European
4/ 48

Delany and Campbell, Search For a Place, 133-35. Ibid, 102-106.

49 Alexander Crummell, "The Relations and Duty of Free Colored Men in Amrica to frica," in Okon Uya, ed., Black Brotherhood, 219-20. See also Alexander Crummell, "Progress of Civilization Along the West Coast of frica," in his The Future of frica: Being Addresses, Sermons, Delivered in the Republic of Liberia (New York, 1862), 107. * Alexander Crummell, "Address Before the American Geographical Society," in his frica and Amrica: Addresses and Discourses (New York, 1969), 31623; also his "Our National Mistakes," Ibid., 181-87.

5! Crummell, "The English Language in Liberia," in his The Future of frica, 32- 36.

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were attempting to develop justifications for their "civilizing mission," which ulti-mately resulted in frica*s colonization. The linkages between the nationalist and Pan-Africanist ideas and schemes of these black nationalists and those of the Euro-pean imperiaJists are too numerous to be enumerated in this limited essay. They are dealt with in my book UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (University Press of Kentucky, 1998). By the second half of the nineteenth century, black American nationalism had entered its "golden age/* or what Wilson Moses calis the "classical age/' a period characterized by the desire to crate a black or African nationality outside the United States.52 This emigrationist ethos, as Theodore Draper aptly noted, resulted from frustration over failure to achieve American nationality.53 Emigrationists felt alien-ated from the United States. In very strong terms, the "militant" nationalists of the epoch rejected Amrica and turned to frica for the construction of an identity and nationality that had been denied them. They expected this new nationality to func-tion as the bulwark against a pervasive and ever-threatening Euro-American forc. Given the depth of frustration and alienation from white Americans and European vales and civilization, and the forc and vehemence with which they defined their nationalist platform, it seems logical to expect an equally forceful and sustained projection of the issue of identity and cooperation with frica. Curiously, this Pan-African relationship did not materialize. All the leading black American nationalists of the classical epochMartin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Henry McNeal Turnerbegan on a solid Pan-African theoretical platform only to relapse into a state of historical amnesia. They, especially Delany and Turner, set out on a strong anti-American and anti-European note, and declared a determination to unite with Africans in order to develop a black nationality. Both men drew the racial boundary line clearly, identifying Euro-Americans as threats to black cultural, emotional, and physical survival. They opted for an independent black nationality. But almost immediately, the two proceeded to contradict and subvert the goal they had defined. Insteadof cooperation with Africans, they embraced European platforms and poli-cies. They saw salvation for frica in the programs of the European powers and seem quickly to have forgotten the threats Europeans and white Americans allegedly posed to blacks and Africans. In other words, they immersed themselves in the rising tide of imperialism and colonialism, and embraced policies that were designed to effect the cultural alienation of Africans, the rape and pillage of the economic resources of the continent, and blatant violation and destruction of African sovereignty and territorial integrity. The historical context of this contradiction in black American nationalism is noteworthy. The "Classical Age" of black American nationalism coincided with the European Scramble for frica, a process that resulted in the partitioning of the continent. A very potent imperial ideology popularized the myth of frica as a "Dark Continent" of barbarism and heathenism. Delany, Crummell, and Turner all per-

Moses, The Golden Age; see also his Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey (New York, 1996). 53 Theodore Draper, "The Father of Black American Nationalism," New York Times Review ofBooks (March 12, 1970).

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formed a curious about-face and accepted a priori the Eurocentric projection of the West as the standard-bearer of civilization. Having been westernized themselves, they embraced the Europeans as partners with whom they shared cultural attributes. They encouraged the Europeans, and added their own dimensions to imperial ideol-ogy. Put differently, not only did black American nationalists embrace Eurocen-trism, they also argued forcefully for the occupation of frica, and the subvention of her independence. They appealed to Europeans for acceptance and cooperation as partners in the task of civilizing "primitive frica/* They were more concerned with securing a place for themselves in the imperial schemes than with developing and strengthening the Pan-African nexus, a commitment they initially advocated. They deemed unity and cooperation with Africans in the true spirit of Pan-Africanism impracticable given first, Africa's alleged primitive and lowly state, and second, Europeas determination and power. Black American nationalists, therefore, became preoccupied with convincing the Europeans of their qualification to function along-side the Europeans as bearers of civilization. They felt compelled to prove to the Europeans how distant and different they were from frica. To accomplish this, they appropriated the language of European imperialism in caricaturing and demeaning indigenous African societies, vales, and traditions. Wilson Moses* recent claim that "American black nationalist have never openly advocated the dis-placement or oppression of indigenous African populations. At least in their speeches and writings they have always made the claim of a commitment to the universal improvement of the African condition" is therefore inaccurate.54 Whatever positive Delany, Crummell, and Turner said about frica was often qualified or negated by their acknowledgment of frica's alleged primitive and decadent condition and by their declaration of cultural distance. This was a trait of many black American nationalists that became more pronounced in the crucial second half of the nineteenth century. Perhaps without realizing it, Delany, Crummell, and Turner contributed to the ideological foundation of the "civilizing mission," a euphemism for the plunder and subversin of frica's sovereignty. Scholars such as August Meier, Elliott Rudwick, Gregory Rigsby, and Wilson Moses who have addressed the complex, diverse, and the Anglo-Saxon character of black American nationalism are often reluctant to prob the deeper implications, and fail to show how this shared world view tied the nationalists to colonialismo 5 It wasn't just that black American nationalists harbored Anglo-Saxon and Victorian vales, but that they advanced these vales as grounds for the colonization of frica. Interestingly, one factor that served to cement the identity that black American nationalists sought with European imperialists was slavery. All who embarked on the quest for a black/African nationality started initially on a strong and "radical" anti-European and anti-White platform. They declared opposition to, and a rejection of, white/European hegemonic vales and inclinations. No sooner had they done this than it became obvious that they lacked a viable racial constituency on which to sustain a black nationality. In other words, they discovered that the dream for a

Moses, Classical Black Nationalism, 11.

*5 Moses, The Golden Age; August Meier, John H. Bracey, and Elliott M. Rudwick, Black Nationalism in Amrica (New York, 1970); Rigsby, Alexander Crummell.

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black/African nationality was a minority one among blacks in the United States. Delany, Crummell, and Turner were then compelled to appeal to white Americans and to the European imperial powers for assistance. It proved difficult, however, to convince Europeans to recognize black Americans as equally qualified for the task of spreading civilization to frica. France, Germany, Belgium, and Britain had developed a very forceful racially based imperial ideology to justify their impending intrusin into fricaan ideology that defined frica as a "Dark Continent" of barbarism and paganism, and by extensin, all blacks, including those in diaspora, as innately inferior and primitive. For blacks in diaspora, this was condemnation by association. Black American nationalists consequently felt the need for some qualification to establish that they were qualita-tively different from Africans. They found the answer in slavery. They theorized that slavery brought them out of "dark" frica into cise proximity with Europeans. Enslavement socialized them in superior European vales. Consequently, black Americans could not be classed in the same category with indigenous Africans. Delany, Crummell, and Turner all advanced a religious/ historicist interpretation of slavery.56 They described enslavement of Africans as a divinely sanctioned and planned episode. It was, according to Delany, the "finger of God" directing the affairs of nations toward the fulfillment of a divine wish. 57 Simply put, God directed Europeans to frica, to enslave Africans so as to bring them in touch with civilization. Slavery was, therefore, a schooling in being civilized. Those who graduated would then return to frica as missionaries of progress and civilization to those left behind to languish in darkness. Though involuntary and evil, slavery, Delany argued, bred an educated, enlightened and civilized black American popula-tion destined for greater responsibility and greatness in frica.58 Through the three hundred years of slavery in Amrica, therefore, frica was left in an arrested stage awaiting the "graduation" of her enslaved brethren. Alexander Crummell described slavery as the "fortnate fall," an embodiment of positive experience. God sanctioned slavery because He had a greater purpose in mindthat those enslaved and then civilized would return to elvate the rest of frica from primitivism.59 Henry McNeal Turner describes slavery as "The most rapid transition to civilization for the Negro."60 Delany, Turner, and Crummell all minimized the atrocities of slavery. Turner, in fact, opined that in the future, the world would become more apprecia-tive of the positive character of slavery,61 a necessary price to pay for the benefits of Western civilization. This redefnition of slavery absolved European slavers of any guilt or responsibility. But it also bridged the cultural gap between black Americans and Europeans. Enslavement had "civilized" them, thus establishing grounds for

^ Delany, "Political Destiny," 353.

57

Ibid., 351-56.

" Ibid., 353. See also his, The Condition, Chs. 4 and 5. *9 Rigsby, Alexander Crummell, 113. 60 Henry M. Turner, "The Question of Race," in Redkey, ed M Rsped Black, 74.

"' Henry McNeal Turner, "An Emigration Convention," in Ibid., 147.

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cultural identity, cooperation, and partnership with Europeans in the task of civiliz-ing "primitive" Africans. Late nineteenth-century black American nationalism was consequently anything but Pan-African. That Delany, Crummell, and Turner expressed sympathy for frica and initially declared a commitment to black and African development and liberation does not mean that they could not at the same time nurse hegemonic vales and aspirations, especially given their subscription to the prevailing Victorian images of frica. This is definitely not Pan-Africanism; this is essentially black American nationalism in its Eurocentric robes. It should also be understood that Pan-Africanism, in and of itself, does not preclude hegemonic vales. Delany, Crummell, and Turner combined both elements of nationalism and imperialism. While they espoused black nationalist ideis, they were equally imperialistic toward frica. There is, therefore, a sense in which the depiction of Pan-Africanism as a phenomenon deeply embedded in history is fallacious. If Pan-Africanism is con-ceived of not just as a statement of intent, an expression of desires and goals, but more in terms of the actual implementation of the vales and expressed desires and goalsthat is, the praxis, as opposed to the theoretical postulationsthen its historicity is not as deep-rooted as is often presumed. In other words, Pan-Africanism is "a political and cultural phenomenon that regards frica, Africans, and African descendants abroad as a unit ... [and] seeks to regenrate and unify frica and promote a feeling of oneness among the people of the African world." The Seventh Pan-African Congress affirmed "a global calling to advance the cause of liberation, freedom and unity of African peoples at home and abroad/' under-scoring a relationship of mutuality between two or more peoples drawn together by shared experiences, and on the basis of which they construct a common platform of struggle for change.62 Put succinctly, the conception of Pan-Africanism as a move-ment to "crate a common identity between the Africans and Africans in diaspora in order to achieve unity of purpose" is a twentieth-century development, associated with the Congress tradition.63 Serious attempts to adhere faithfully to the mutuality ethos of Pan-Africanism occurred in the context of the twentieth-century Congress tradition. The most criti-cal attribute of Pan-Africanism is the conviction that the shared cultural and histori-cal experiences of Africans and black diasporans constitute the basis of mutual struggle for advancement and development. In the past, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century, black American nationalists expressed interest in frica, acknowledged their African ancestry, and perhaps most critically, declared a commitment to the advancement of frica. However, as this article demonstrates, they never seriously regarded Africans as partners with whom they could engage in a common cause. The notion of mutuality was rarely sustained to any great depth during the nineteenth century. Black American nationalism manifested a curious cultural fluidity and constantly shifted between admiration for and revulsin against

"^ Esedebe, Pan-Africanism, 5; Lemelle andKelley, eds., Imagining Home, 361. "3 Gabriel O. Olusanya, "African Historians and the Pan-African Tradition/' in Erim O. Erim and Okon Uya, eds., Perspectives and Methods of Studying African History (Enugu, 1984), 10.

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both frica and Euro-American cultural vales. In essence, there has to be a dis-tinction between the rhetoric of mutuality and the reality of contradiction and distance that informed black American perception and treatment of frica. Tradi-tional study of the ideological foundation of imperialism in frica emphasizes the European or external factor. Those schooled in postcolonial historiography were taught that the ideological foundation of imperialism in frica was built by Euro-pean racists, scholars, missionaries, and explorers. My research, however, emphasizes a much broader and intriguing perspective. Europeans were not alone in developing the ideological structure upon which colonialism rested. Black American nationalists were deeply implicated in the process. Though they had disappeared from the African scene by the time of the actual European occupation, Delany, Crummell, and Turner remained culpable nonetheless. Acknowledgment of the role of black Americans in the ideological justification of imperialism has serious implication for the Pan-Africanism that is at the heart of Afrocentricity. It is necessary to reexamine the conceptual framework and acknowl-edge the historical limitations of Pan-Africanism. Those who define Pan-Africanism as a movement predicated historically on mutuality, consensus, shared identity, and interests between Africans and black diasporans misrepresent and possibly misun-derstand its history. The actual practicalization of the ideis of mutuality, shared identity, and cooperation between the two is a twentieth-century phenomenon, associated with the Congress movement, inspired by colonialism and the global advance of imperialism. Colonialism made real unity and cooperation between Africans and black diasporans possible and sustained that relationship through the anticolonial phase to independence. Colonialism energized Pan-Africanism and strengthened Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, and others in their resolve and struggle. They stuck together, Africans and black diasporans, regard-less of obvious cultural differences. In combination, they generated the forc that ultimately toppled colonialism. The demise of colonialism unfortunately also marked the beginning of the end of Pan-Africanism as a movement. When statesmen like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania tried to strengthen Pan-Africanism in the aftermath of independence, they carne up against the forces of parochialism and micronationalism. Other African countries, Nigeria included, refused to surrender their newly won sovereignty for a continental supra-sovereignty. The forces of regionalism, ethnocentrism, "tribalism," religious nationalism, and fanaticism have assumed preeminence in frica after independence. The conception of shared identity was premised on the reality of shared experi-ence, struggles, and challenges. Put differently, that identity was not based on either ethnicity or on culture. Black Americans did acknowledge cultural distance from frica. Cuffee and Cary lamented Africa's cultural decadence. They were prompted by a conviction of cultural difference from, indeed superiority over, Africans to initiate schemes designed to faciltate the economic development and cultural transformaron of the continent. Later generations of black nationalists would echo similar convictions, sometimes in a much more forceful manner. The notion of shared identity, consequently, was derived purely from shared historical experience emanating from racism, marginalization, and domination, and not from any deep

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conviction of ethnic or cultural consanguinity. Even as they embraced and uplifted frica, and prioritized her problems and challenges, nineteenth-century black American nationalists and Pan-Africanists clearly did not regard Africans as cultur-ally similar to themselves. This fact played a greater role in shaping the ambivalence that black American nationalists and Pan-Africanists of the epoch manifested to a degree that rendered superfluous the whole notion of brotherliness and identity central to Pan-Africanism. The point is that Pan-Africanism was steeped in contradiction from its historical beginnings, a contradiction that was perhaps most evident in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the second decade of the twentieth century, however, the Congress movement, to a significant degree, had erased this contradiction. Africans became part of the Pan-African movement as partners of black diasporans in ways the nineteenth-century nationalist context and tradition did not permit. Although they harbored equally condescending and Anglo-Saxon biases against Africans, just as their nineteenth-century predecessors had, organizers of the Congress movement refused to embrace imperialism or engage it in any compromising manner. Du Bois, Edward Wilmot Blyden, George Padmore, and Sylvester Williams embraced Africans as partners in a common struggle and were unequivocal in their condemnation of colonialism and imperialism, their intellectual and ideolgica! ambivalence notwithstanding. As it developed in the twentieth century, Pan-Africanism prioritized coopera-tion between black diasporans and Africans for mutual advancement. The two were drawn together by consciousness of shared historical experiences and identity. The combative outlook of the twentieth-century Pan-Africanists was shaped by the advancement and global trajectories of imperialism. The new breed of Pan-Africanists were alarmed by the consolidation of colonialism in frica and the racial ramifications of imperialism. These developmenls hastened the transition of Pan-Africanism from consciousness to movement. The movement, an expression of mutuality and struggle built on the notion of brotherliness, was indeed positive. Modern proponents of Pan-Africanism in the diaspora, Afrocentrists and others, ignore the state of decline and decadence in frica that is obviously detri-mental to Pan-Africanism. Holding meetings and pronouncing lofty declarations are not enough if the foundations for realistically achieving the objective are nonexist-ent. How can black Americans and Africans revive Pan-Africanism as a weapon of struggle, survival, and advancement today if intemally both are chronically dysfunctional and divided on the notion of identity? Black American proponents of Pan-Africanism ignore the existence of a conservative stream that is vehemently opposed to Pan-Africanism, one that sees black American problems as essentially internal, and favors a solution that is localized. Douglass Turner Ward, the Black American playwright; Robert L. Woodson, executive director of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprises; Keith Richburg, former Washington Post frica bureau chief; and Armstrong Williams, radio talk show host and commentator, to ame a few, are among the many members of this group. In essence, there is a strong voice against essentializing the African connection even among black Americans. As this study has shown, Pan-Africanism did at some point possess a noble history and goal, and manifested a certain degree of consistency. Africans and black diasporans did come together, drawn by shared experience and a genuine sense of

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identity and mutual obligations to forge a common struggle. This was the Congress tradition (1900-1945) that accelerated the political decolonization of frica. Indeed, this was perhaps the zenith of the Pan-African tradition. Pan-Africanism has since become a shadow of its former self. All talks about regenerating it have been rhetorical and intellectual posturing devoid of any serious attempts to grapple with its challenges and contradictions. The contradictions are of two dimensions. The frst relates to the internal postcolonial realities of frica. The second refers to the complex and problematic character of the identity problem in frica and among black Americans. Though the movement was of diaspora origin, frica remained the centerpiece of Pan-Africanism. As Carmichael put it, "Although Pan-Africanism has its origin among the Afncans of the diaspora, Mother frica is its sine qua non."64 He went on to arge, "Afncans on both sides of the Atlantic contributed immensely to the ideology, but only in frica will we see its fruition. Unity of frica is prerequisite for complete liberation ofblacks "65 [emphasis added]. Pan-Africanism is about black diasporans rallying to the defense of frica. It is about continental Africans treating each other as one, and most importantly, as human beings. It is also about Afncans and black diasporans jointly united in a common struggle. It is about a consciousness of identity, of Afncans and peoples of African descent relating to each other on the basis of mutual respect. More than anything else, it is about conditions in frica. A critical look at this African focus is crucial if present calis for reactivating Pan-Africanism are to be taken seriously. The African context is presently problematic, and until this is addressed, attempts to reactivate Pan-Africanism will remain sloganeering. Pan-Africanism cannot be built on a truncated and dysfunctional foundation. The notion of shared experience between Africans and black Americans is today rendered fallacious by a combina-don of circumstances. Perpetrators of the ills plaguing frica and black Amrica racism, ethnocentrism, corruption, unemployment, exploitation, marginalization, and povertyare fundamentally different. There is no basis for unity on the grounds of shared problems, challenges, and enemies as in the past. The problems may be similar, but the perpetrators, that is, the enemies, are not the same. The basis, therefore, for the kind of mutuality suggested by Afrocentric scholarship is nonexistent under present circumstances. Afncans are being discriminated against, oppressed, denied basic human rights, killed, and maimed by fellow Africans. Many observers continu to perceive the ghosts of colonialism and neocolonialism in frica's present predicament. They characterize the resilience of tribalism, the nagging cncer of ethnicity and ethnocentrism, and the undemocratic and destruc-tive character of the military as enduring legacies of colonialism. While this is true, it is difficult to contend, as was fashionable in the immediate postindependent era, that all of frica's problems are caused solely by colonialism and its relies, or by indigenous leaders controlled by external interests. Many of the causes of the present dysfunctional state of many African countries are in fact direct consequences of the policies of the indigenous leadership. For example, the policies of the Nigerian military junta, especially in the last ten years, under Ibrahim Babangida and his

04

Carmichael, Stokely Speaks, 223. 65

Ibid.

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successor, Sani Abacha, have little to do with neocolonialism. Neither of these men can be regarded as the interna! stooge of a foreign power. In fact, Abacha perpe-trated his reign of terror despite foreign opposition and condemnation. The Identity Construct The second critical dimensin to Afrocentricity is the claim of African identity that is, the insistence upon defining black Americans as Africans. The identity paradigm rejects any definition of black Americans other than as Africans, sometimes spelled with a "k." This conviction is based on the elements of African traditions and vales (or what some scholars cali "Africanism") found among blacks in diaspora. The implication is that, centuries of enslavement and separation notwith-standing, blacks in diaspora retain essential aspects of their African cultural identity. The identity paradigm defines black Americans, and indeed the entire black diaspora population, as Africans, racially, ethnically, and culturally, centuries of exposure to, and acculturation in, Western/European vales and civilization notwithstanding. At crucial moments in the history of the black American experience, the identity paradigm has been invoked by individuis and groups to advance the cause of free-dom and upliftment. A leading proponent of this paradigm is Dona Marimba. In her book, Le the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora, Marimba insists that black Americans and blacks in the Caribbean and South Amrica are Africans because they retained so much of indigenous African traditions in their music, religin and lifestyles. According to her, Africans and blacks in diaspora are united by the two essential ingredients of identityethos and world view.66 The identity claim is based on historical linkage, heritage, and cultural reten-tions. The contention is that blacks in the United States are Africans and should vigorously and consciously exhibit this Africanness in their livesmodes of thought, dressing, culture, and lifestyles.67 This perspective de-emphasizes the Du Boisian identity construct that asserts a complex black American identity. In his epochal book, The Souls of Black Folk, published at the turn of the century, Du Bois described black Americans as peoples of dual identity who are constantly bat-tling with, are in fact tormented by, the conflicting demands of their dual identities. According to him, One ever feels his twoness,an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideis in one dark body The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.68

b 67

Dona Marimba Richards, Let The Circle Be Unbroken (Trenton, N.J., 1980).

Ibid. Asante, Afrocentricity, sec also Asante's "Racism, Consciousncss and Afrocentricity," in Gerald Early, cd., Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity and The Ambivalence of Assimilaion (Ncw York, 1993), 127-43.
68

William E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago, 1903),

3.

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While acknowledging the American experience, Afrocentrists refuse to accord it much signifcance in the shaping of the identity of blacks. Black Americans, Afrocentrists contend, remain essentially Africans, despite centuries of sojourn, experience, and enculturation in the New World. Black Americans were supposed to have come out of slavery and the American experience with their African identity intact. This is a direct contradiction of the Du Boisian perspective. It is my conten-tion that Du Bois's insight was much more realistic. Regardless of the degree of African cultural retentions, regardless of how far black Americans went in changing their ames and wearing African clothes, they remain. in large part, products of the American historical experience, an experience that significantly shaped their identity. This experience has left its mark indelibly on black American culture and identity. In essence, Du Bois's recognition of the dual historical and cultural experience is far more accurate. The black experience in the diaspora was culturally transformatory and revolu-tionary. It is impossible to ignore this complex historical reality, as leading Afrocentrists do in a bid to impose a superficial and problematic Pan-African identity. It is noteworthy that many black Americans remain skeptical of the potency, or even relevance, of a paradigm that situates their identity outside Amrica. In fact, the debate among black American intellectuals on the pertinence of the African connection is heated. On the one extreme are the slavocentrists, those who arge that the black American identity should have Amrica rather than frica as its foun-dation. They identity slavery, rather than frica, as the substantive forc in the shaping of the black American experience and identity. For the slavocentrists, the experience of slavery was more potent than the fact of African ancestry. This is the antithesis of the Afrocentric perspective. A leading advcate of this view is the black American playwright, Douglass Turner Ward, who raised the issue in his keynote address during the 1995 meeting of the Southern Conference on Afro-American Studies in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He distinguished between two identity paradigms, "slavocentric" and "Afrocentric." While acknowledging black American connections with frica, Ward insisted that what shaped the black American identity was slavery, rather than frica, and consequently, since enslavement was essentially institutionalized here in Amrica, the study of the black American experience and, ipso facto, the determination and definition of identity, should focus on, and begin with, the American experience! This is what he called the slavocentric paradigm. Ward accorded preeminence to slavery and the American identity, in direct contradiction to the prevailing and increasingly popular Afrocentric paradigm. In other words, he supports de-emphasizing the Pan-African paradigm. He is not alone in this conviction. Though many scholars, including this writer, disagree with Ward's nullification of the African background, they have little objection to essentializing the Euro-American identity. Ward represents an extreme position. Most critiques of the Afrocentric and Pan-African paradigms do not jettison the African background. They acknowledge its pertinence, and object solely to the preeminence it is given. Many critics describe the tendency to overem-phasize the African connection, at the expense of the complex American and diaspora experience, as perhaps the most critical flaw of the Afrocentric and identity paradigms.

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Aside from the two polarities, there are other contending perspectives on the identity of black Americans. The Du Boisian perspective seems to be the most popular and current, since it acknowledges the pertinence of both experiences and underscores the complexity. This is the Afro-Americanist perspective. Another discernible perspective is the universalist. Universalists acknowledge both the Afri-can and American experiences, but would exalt neither. They maintain that because blacks in diaspora have been socialized among people of European ancestry, they inherited universal vales, vales that were neither distinctly African or distinctly Euro-American. They suggest that black Americans share more in common with the broader humanity than with frica, and identify themselves primarily as human beings. This group, however, tends to lean more toward the American identity. Members tend to be very critical and resentful of the Africanist/Afrocentric perspective.69 Rhett Jones, former director of the Race and Ethnicity Research Center at Brown University, has addressed perhaps the most critical dimensin of the prob-lematic of identitythe absence, among black Americans, of an ethnic identity with frica. He advances what amounts to a neo-Frazierian position. According to him, slavery accomplished the total destruction of the ethnic identity of black Americans. The terrible experience of the Middle Passage and the brutal horrors of slavery eliminated any sense of ethnic identity among blacks. The rapid growth of the black American population meant that frica was soon only a memory for the majority of black Americans. Knowledge of their ethnic affiliation and where they carne from in frica was soon lost. Perhaps the first batch of slaves brought in kept this knowledge.70 However as the years progressed, such knowledge of language and culture became fuzzy and distant as the slaves became enmeshed in the reality of new sociocultural and ethnic formations. The loss of this ethnic identity consequently left black Americans clinging to the broader geographical construct of frica. Unfortunately, there is no ethnic group called "African" in frica. This is signifi-cant. The word "frica" is a geographical construct, and bears no ethnic connotaron. There are thousands of ethnic/ linguistic groups in frica, among them Yoruba, Grebo, Hausa, Igbo, Xhosa, Zul, Shona, Ewe, Fante, Asante, Hutu, Tutsi, and literally hundreds of others. Ethnicity is central to the construction of identity. In other words, the claim of identity is only validated on the basis of an ethnic affiliation. Underscoring the peculiarity of the black American condition, Jones contends that unlike in Brazil and Cuba where the importation of African slaves continued well into the late nineteenth century, providing the strong forc of African retentions in culture, music, and arts that is noticeable today, comparatively few slaves were brought to the United States beyond the third quarter of the eighteenth centurythe bulk of the slave population was,
y Glen Loury, "Free At Last? A Personal Perspective on Race and Identity in Amrica," in Early, ed., Lure and Loathing, 1-12; Stanley Crouch, "Who Are We ? Where Did We Come From? Where Are We Going?" Ibid., 80-94. See also Crouch's most recent work, The All-American Skin Game, or The Decoy of Race: The Long and The Short of It, 1990-i 994 (New York, 1995). 0 Rhett S. Jones, "Why Pan-Africanism Failed: Blackness and International Relations," The Griot, 14, 1 (1995), 54-61.
7

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therefore, American not African born. By 1775 the vast majority of blacks in British North Amrica were the grandchildren of persons born in the new world. As a result, few black Americans had a sense of African identity, although may identify with frica.71 Consequently, Black Americans share racial, rather than ethnic, identity with frica. However, very often racial identity is mistaken for, or, used synonymously with, ethnic identity, and the emphasis given to racial identity often beclouds the lack of ethnic identity. In his Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear Between Blacks and Whites, Harlon Dalton further underscores the centrality of ethnicity to the definition of identity. According to him, "Ethnicity is the bearer of culture. It describes that aspect of our heritage that provides us with a mother tongue and that shapes our vales, our world view, our family structure, our moris, the food we eat, our mating behavior, our music...."72 If Dalton's contention is valid, and if one equally accepts Rhett Jones's claim that black Americans lack ethnic identity with frica, then the Afrocentric claim of African identity becomes even more problematic. Black Americans have no mother tongue. Though they may have valu systems, world views, family structure, music, or religin that reflect African influences and retentions, the African essence and character is less dominant and pervasive than Dona Marimba and other Afrocentrists claim. The black American world view and valu system is an admixture of African and New World experiences. It is interest-ing to note that even among Afrocentric or "Africancentric" scholars, there is now a growing concern over the absolutist stance of Asante and Marimba on the subject of identity. In rejecting Asante's "100 percent African parentage" thesis, one "Africancentric" scholar contends, To Asante all black people in this regin of the world are Africans.... In Asante's Africancentric perception and philosophical or theoretical project, there are not significant distinctions between Africans and people of African descent ... ignoring, or down-playingand even suppressinga lot of historical, cultural, and social reality.73 Essentially, he contines, Asante accepts "only an African parentage for blacks in Amrica," while completely blacking out the Euro-American parentage.74 There is also unmistakable variance between the claim of African identity on the one hand, and black American ability and willingness to reflect this "Africanism" in their lifestyles. In other words, there is much more to being African than simply changing one's ames or dressing in African attire. Being African has to do with acknowledging the forc and authority, and living according to the dictates of, African culture. Black Americans are incapable of fully committing
71

Ibid., 55.

'2 Harlon L. Dalton, Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear Between Blacks and Whites (New York, 1995), 107.
7 3 W. D. Wright, Black Intellectuals, Black Cognition, and a Black Aesthetic (Westport, Conn. 1997), 38-39. 74

Ibid., 39.

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themselves to the power and authority of Afincan culture. While they lay claim to certain facets of African culture, they have yet to understand, let alone acknowledge, the sovereign power of African culture. In laying claim to African identity, Afrocentrists merely emphasize the aesthetics of African cultureames, dress, festivals, even foodwhile ignoring perhaps the most significant factor in the making of the African identity, the "legislative" authority of African culture. Culture is a powerful authority in frica. It makes demands and imposes obli-gations that no man-made law can undermine or challenge. In fact, it is culture that shapes the most critical aspects of identity. A good example of this is the rea of parental responsibility. It is tradition, not law, that defines and establishes the basis and extent of parental responsibility among Africans. Those raised in Western soci-ety may find this restrictive and oppressive. Child-rearing among Africans is the responsibility of the family, both immediate and extended. This responsibility is perpetual, that is, until the child is able to assume a position of independence. Legal definitions of adulthood have no bearing on parental responsibility. As children grow up, they are socialized to recognize, not only their place in the extended family network, but also, and most importantly, to acknowledge that they equally owe a responsibility to the family, immediate and extended. The concept of responsibility is extended and perpetual. There is no point at which a parent or child can "legally" termnate this responsibility or relationship. This is what distinguishes the African ethos of responsibility, and deepens and strengthens mutuality. Parents, children, the extended family network, are all united and reassured by a strong sense of mutuality. Certain actions are consequently taboo in the African context. For example, acknowledging the legal determination of the limit of responsibility, sending the aged to retirement homes, requiring children who should otherwise be in school to work in order to contribute to housekeeping expenses and pay their tuition while living with their parents. One is not suggesting that all black Ameri-cans subscribe to these practices. There are certainly families, black American and even white, that replcate the African model. It is sufficient, however, to know that there are practices, both attirudinal and cultural, that are deemed normative and appropriate in American society to which blacks subscribe, that are inconceivable in an African cultural context. In other words, the American cultural context permits and normalizes tendencies that a true African would shy at embracing. That black Americans subscribe to Euro-American cultural patterns, even as they retain facets of African vales, underscores the complexity of the identity problem. Though of African ancestry, black Americans are also Americans and consequently need to acknowledge and come to terms with the fact that it is impossible to turn their backs completely on the Amrica experience and its cultural ramifications. The implication of the current crisis in frica for the notion of identity among Africans is equally significant. If there is a crisis of identity among black Americans, there is an even greater crisis of identity among Africans. Without resolving this crisis, talks of forging Pan-African linkage with blacks across the Atlantic are delusive. How can Africans talk seriously about shared identity with diasporans, just as the heads of state who organized and participated in the Seventh Pan-African Congress in Kampala did, when they themselves do not wholly identify with their compatriots? How can Africans abroad talk about togetherness and identity with

black Americans, when these Africans nurse mutual resentment toward each other

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based on ethnicity, religin, or some other primordial factor? Put differently, how can Pan-Africanism be revived in frica where ethnocentrism and micronationalism have eroded the very foundation upon which Pan-Africanism could have thrived? It is no exaggeration to venture the suggestion that some Africans feel more at ease and comfortable with foreigners than with fellow Africans, particularly of a differ-ent ethnic background. This is a reality that black American advocates of Pan-Africanism, particularly Afrocentrists, have refused to acknowledge. There is conse-quently a far deeper crises of identity among Africans than is acknowledged by Afrocentrists. Ethnic cleansing, the sort of barbarie human carnage witnessed in Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Zaire, or Somalia, and the state of mass misery and impoverishment prevalent in Nigeria, Kenya, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other African countries, are not manifestations of ethos of mutuality among Africans, or are they indicative of a pervasive consciousness of identity. The resurgence of Pan-African consciousness among black Americans is shaped by the od romanticized perception of frica that ignores the reality of ethnic, cultural, and linguistic divergence and contradictions (not just complexity). Black Americans acknowledge the complex nature of African society. What they have had difficulty coming to terms with is the fact that beneath the complexity lie serious contradictions. The popular contention that frica is peopled by complex cultures, languages, and ethnic groups who share underlying and unifying cultural attributes remains valid. Though Africans speak different languages and belong to different religious denominations and ethnic groups, they equally share certain common vales. In other words, there are certain cultural traits that are indeed truly "African." Nevertheless, a more realistic perspective of looking at frica today is the pessimistic perspective. Though Africans share certain unifying attributes, they remain a divergent and chronically divided people. The reality of frica today does not justify the enthusiasm and faith of proponents of the Pan-African paradigm. Realistically, in its present condition, frica cannot be a viable component of any Pan-African movement or tradition. Pan-Africanism essentializes brotherhood, cooperation, love, and togetherness. In other words, it engenders a mutuality defned by cultural identity, interests, ethos and world view. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, frica served as a rallying point of Pan-Africanism. During these times the whole continent was under colonial rule, and Jim Crow was on the rise in the United States. The problems that Africans and black Americans confronted were indeed identical and unambiguously clear: racism and colonialism. The enemy was, ipso Jacto, easy to identity. This facilitated a consen-sus on the defnition and identity of the enemyEuropean imperialists and white Americans. Consequently, it was possible for Africans, black Americans, and West Indians to unite in the true spirit of Pan-Africanism. The situation in frica today is different. Colonialism died in most African countries about thirty-five years ago. It has been replaced by a new demon, however, an indigenous demon that is racially identifiable as black. The current state of political instability, economic decadence, corruption of epic proportion, systematic looting of state treasury by the political lite, crisis of legitimacy reflected in the almost complete collapse of the nation-state, the ascendance of ethnocentric and micronationalistic sentimentsare all

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perpetrated by indigenous leaders. Among the casualties are the concepts of nation-hood and identity. Political analysts agree that most black African states today are mere conglomrales of conflicting, diverse, and mutually resentful ethnic and linguistic groups, and that loyalty has shifted from the nation-state to the ethnic or linguistic enclave. The state in frica seems to have lost all legitimacy and is held together by the sheer forc of terror and intimidation. In Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Cameroon, the last fifteen years has witnessed persistent calis from alienated minority groups for statehoodthat is, for greater autonomy and independence. Even in Nigeria, where a bloody civil war almost ripped the country apart in the 1960s, one hears loud echoes of secessionist aspirations, particularly from the southern part of the country. The genocidal policies and ethnic cleansing in Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Liberia, Zaire, and Ethiopia are perpetrated by Afri-cans upon fellow Africans. Though some of these problems have their roots deeply buried in the colonial past, and may relate to the ghost of neocolonialism, the inten-sity and degree of all these problems have been exacerbated by the policies of African leadership. An example is ethnicity, popularly known as tribalism, which has become perhaps the deadliest cncer to eat away at the very fbre of African nation-hood. According to a leading authority, "In frica [tribalism] has a colonial origin and its function was tied to the nature and purpose of colonialism."75 Though of colonial origin and contrived to facilitate domination and exploitation, ethnicity was soon perpetrated and developed by indigenous African leaders to facilitate the dominance and hegemony of one ethnic group or regin over the others.76 The result is the almost total meltdown of any bond holding the ethnic groups together. No one could have predicted the state of moral and political decadence in frica today, much of it the result of the inept, ethnocentric, and selfish policies of its leadership. With the exception of a few countries, the entire continent is engulfed in military dictatorship, ethnic conflicts, political persecution, instability, economic decay, and corruption of the worst kind. Africans are today perhaps the most oppressed and saddened peoples in the world. The revolution of rising expectations generated by independence has since given place to despair and nightmare. As George Ayittey, a leading authority on African political economy, surmised, Various actors foreign as well as domestic, participated, wittingly or not, in the devastation of frica. It is easy for African leaders to put the blame somewhere else, for example on western aid donor or on an allegedly hostile international economic environment.... Certainly, donor blunder and other external factors have contributed to the crisis in frica, but in my view the inte mal factors have played a far greater role than the external ones11 (emphasis added). Nobel laurate Wole Soyinka of Nigeria recently authored a scathing review of the state of political and moral decadence in frica, with emphasis on Nigeria. His

0 76 77

Okwudiba Nnoli, Ethnic Polines in Nigeria (Enugu, 1978), 1, 35-97. Ibid., 140-214. Gcorgc B. N. Ayittey, frica Betrayed (Ncw York, 1992), 335-36.

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book, The Open Sore of a Continent, should be read by anyone who professes an iota of interest in the future of frica and in the relationship between frica and blacks in diaspora. Lamenting the nonexistence of nationhood in frica, Soyinka observes, the essence of nationhood has gone underground and taken refuge in that primary constituency of human association, the cultural bastin. And the longer the dictatorship lasts, the more tenacious becomes the hold of that cultural nationalism, attracting to itself all the allegiance, social relevance and visceral identification that once belonged to the larger nation.78 "The African nation," Soyinka contines, "alas, is mostly viewed through the goggles of [rulership], in studied contrast to the far more organic, comprehensive apprehension of that word when applied to entities like France, Sweden, Japan, Italy, South Korea..."79 For Nigeria, "and this is certainly true of the Ghanaian, the Senegalese, the Malian, Kenyan, Malawian, and Zairoisthe boundaries of a communal identity are today set much more narrowly. The sights of the average nationalist are sadly contracted."80 Regardless of how much one reads about frica and the volume of information one acquires form the media, one can never fully understand and appreciate, from the outside, the full extent of the tragedy that Soyinka, Ayittey, and others highlight in their writings. Consequently, black Americans who advcate Pan-Africanism, believing that they confront similar problems and challenges with Africans, and assuming that all is well with frica, or that African problems are caused by externa! forces, are mistaken. They seem unwilling to confront the stark reality of nter-nal structural violence and contradictions within frica, realities that challenge and negate the concepts of harmony and consensus at the heart of Pan-Africanism. The fact is, Africans are not one and monolithic. They are not harmonious. Though Africans confront challenges that are not fundamentally dissimilar to those of black Americans, the sources are different. Developing a Pan-African relationship, there-fore, requires coming to grips with this fact. The suggestion by the late Walter Rodney that Pan-Africanism be turned inward at the domestic despoilers of frica remains even more relevant today. It would amount to self-delusion for black Americans and Africans to pretend that they share identical problems that fit neatly into the traditional "black-against-white" framework, or that whatever problems they each confront could easily be resolved with a reactivation of Pan-Africanism. The Seventh Pan-African Congress held in Kampala in December 1993 was largely a cooperative effort that involved representatives of blacks in diaspora and Africans (from ordinary citizens, trade unionists, social critics, and political leaders). The deliberations and declarations of the Congress clearly betray a conservative orienta-tion, the rhetoric of nationalism and Pan-Africanism notwithstanding. Delegates identified the goal of Pan-Africanism as "liberation of frica from foreign exploita-

' Wole Soyinka, The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (New York, 1996), 139.
79 80

Ibid., 120. Ibid., 128.

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tion, dispossession, and domination."81 They evoked the traditional Pan-African notion of a commonality of threat. According to a declaration of the Congress, changes in the world political and economic structure pose threat to frica and to African people scattered across the planet. frica and her peoples are as a result confronted with new levis of violence, fascism, and recolonization. Pan-Africanism has evolved and must continu to evolve as a move-ment for liberation and unity in these perilous times. 82 This declaration underlines the resilience of the od romanticized view of Pan-Africanism and of the corporate conception of the relationship of black Americans and Africans. This suggests that the delegates remained disinclined to take seriously the problematic and complexity of African and the black diaspora nexus and challenges. Pan-Africanism cannot be meaningful if it is spearheaded and guided by the current African political leadership, those directly responsible for undermining the very foundation upon which a viable Pan-African tradition could have been built. The policies of African political leadership since the dawn of independence have been demonstrably against the Pan-African spirit. Consequently, more than ever before in its history, Pan-Africanism needs to develop as an instrument of self-criti-cism, directed as well against internal and indigenous obstacles to African and black diaspora unity, progress, and survival. Though the neocolonial and neoimperial external factors remain potent, it is equally significant to zero in on, and critically deal with, the indigenous factors. While from a distance, African problems may appear to black Americans as the ghost of the od neocolonial enemy, those problems appear to Africans in their true domestic character and essence and do not fit into the traditional racial mold. The reality is one of blacks against blacks, Africans against Africans. Though recolonization is certainly a threat to frica's independence, however, contrary to the declaration of the Seventh Congress, it is not entirely an external threat. Paradoxically, recolonization as a possible solution to frica's current crises is increasingly gaining currency even among Africans. In the past fifteen years, Africans who are victims of and witnesses to corrup-tion and violence, political instability, economic destruction, and cultural genocides, have engaged in debates on how to resolve the intractable African-on-African oppression. Many have come to the rather disturbing admission that perhaps independence was premature. For instance, in the heat of the crises, corruption and moral decadence that punctuated the life span of Nigeria's second republic, a prominent politician and governor of one of the states lamented the state of moral and political decline and publicly expressed preference for the return of the British! Though few took him seriously, and many probably questioned his sanity, he expressed a feeling, albeit unpopular, that many other Nigerians identified with. While the notion of a return to classical colonialism is anachronistic, Africans have been known to express support for some form of 4tinternal colonialism." During the 1995 African Studies Conference in Toronto, a special session was devoted to the

81 "Resist Recolonization!: General Declaration by the Delegates and Participants at the Seventh Pan-African Congress," in Lemelle and Kelley, eds., Imagining Homey 364. 82

Ibid., 357.

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subject of recolonization. The renowned Africanista Ali Mazmi, suggested the possibility of some of the politically stable and economically viable countries in frica recolonizing the weaker and poorer ones. Regardless of one's position on this subject, recolonization represents the antithesis of Pan-Africanism. It amounts to an acknowledgment of the demise and irrelevance of Pan-Africanism as a strat-egy. Some may detect in Mazrui's suggestion echoes of a Pan-African solidarity, akin to Nkrumah's advocacy of a continental unity. This correlation is baseless. Nkrumah dedicated his life to the search for a political order that would safeguard the corporate existence of African states. He envisioned a United States of frica, "great and powerful, in which the territorial boundaries which are the relies of colo-nialism will become obsolete and superfluous, working for the complete and total mobilization of the economic planning organization under a unified political direc-tion."83 He called for the surrender of national sovereignty to a continental sover-eignty. This Pan-African continental sovereignty would present a united front for frica vis-a-vis external powers. It would genrate the strength needed to protect all African states from external threats. The relationship was such that no state would domnate or exploit the others, in any form or manner.84 Mazrui's suggestion is fundamentally different. He, in effect, called for the hegemony of some African states over others. He used the word "colonize," and it is difficult to see how one can construe this to mean the same as Nkrumaism. Advocates of the Pan-African construct also fail to acknowledge the reality of African and black American conflict, a reality that is often overlooked in the spirit of Pan-Africanism. The relationship between Africans and black Americans is informed by a growing distrust and resentment, exacerbated by the demographics and challenges of the new transplantation. Unlike the forced transplantation of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, which brought Africans to the New World as slaves, the new transplantation is voluntary. It began rather imper-ceptibly, increasing in intensity in the last twenty years. This phenomenon involves Africans, mostly professionalsteachers, doctors, engineers, nurses, businessmen and studentsmigrating into a relatively fluid, open and inviting environment in search of employment, economic elevation, and higher education. The intensity of this migration has opened a new theater of conflict and tensin, especially at a time when opportunities for black Americans appear to be shrinking in the wake of onslaughts upon, and the gradual erosin of, the gains of the Civil Rights move-ment. Black Americans perceive the new African migrants as potential rivals and beneficiaries of resources that, under affirmative action, would have gone strictly to black Americans. In implementing affirmative action, employers rarely distinguish between continental Africans and black Americans. Africans and black Americans become competitors for scarce resources, with the former assuming positions that the latter consider theirs by right. In other words, there is a growing nativist consciousness among black Americans directed against Africans. One reason why this nativist consciousness has remained hidden or controlled is largely because

3 Gideon-Cyrus M. Mutiso and S. W. Rohio, eds., Readings in African Political Thought (London, 1975), 346. 4 Ibid. Also, Some Essential Features of Nkrumaism (London, 1975).

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those who harbor such convictions are often not bold enough to proclaim them openly. Many are afraid of being accused of undermining the Pan-African spirit. There are black Americans who espouse Afrocentric ideas, and salute an African with "Hotep" and "brother," while at the same time exhibiting nativist conscious-ness, questioning the appointment of Africans to positions they believe rightly belong to black Americans. One is not suggesting any degree of depth or universal-ity to this consciousness. Suffice it to acknowledge that it does exist. However, the depth and pervasiveness of nativism among black Americans has not been, and may never be, accurately ascertained, given the cloud of hypocrisy that surrounds it. Nevertheless, it remains a reality that should be confronted and acknowledged rather than brushed aside and ignored. The growth of anti-African feeling among black Americans has yet to attract scholarly interest, and this writer is mindful of its controversial and explosive nature. My observations and contentions come from personal conversations with African and black American students and intellectuals in American colleges. My investigations reveal that many Africans are conscious of a growing resentment from black Americans, particularly over academic positions. Some black Americans have also quietly expressed concern, perhaps even alarm, at the challenges posed by the growing number of African intellectuals. What is particularly intriguing is that few are willing to openly and confidently express these concerns. I have there-fore taken the responsibility of bringing this to the fore, knowing the hazards involvedthe likelihood of being clobbered by both sides! A few anonymous examples will suffice to corrobrate this phenomenon. During my brief stay at a leading Black Studies Department in the Midwest, an opening for a senior-level African historian was advertised and a continental African was invited for interview who eventually got the job. A snior black American faculty member who had earlier voted to invite the candidate for interview later expressed regret at the decisin, explaining that he had endorsed the candidate because he thought his ame sounded black American. This particular professor is popularly known as someone who takes pride in his African roots and connections. His objection and concern, this time around, he said, was because the Black Studies Department already has too many Africans! More recently, at a major southern university, an African director of the African-American Studies Program was literarily hounded out of the institution by persistent opposition, hostility, and pressure from the black American members of the program's advisory committee. Their hostile reactions to his appointment grounded the program and eventually compelled the African to resign. I witnessed the entire drama. These are not, and should not be treated as, isolated cases. Let me hasten to add that I am not unaware of the fact that there does exist harmonious relationship between the two groups in many other places and contexts. The point, however, is that the reality of hostility is often denied outright. It has been customary to presume a certain harmony between Africans and black Americans. This seems a logical assumption and is largely behind the rise in Pan-African sentiments. Though no one has seriously looked at the phenomenon of discord between Africans and black Americans, there are studies on the experience of African emigrants in the United States that clearly reveal the reality of percep-

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tional discord between them. In his study, Kofi Apraku contents, "Obviously, the acculturation process and the experiences that black Americans have gone through in the United States accounts significantly for the perceived differences between them and Africans. These experiences may have shaped the differences in percep-tions and altitudes between the two groups."85 Apraku's study reveis that this disharmony predated the Civil Rights epoch. African students have always encountered problems from black Americans. The relationship between them has not always been harmonious. There was some degree of mutual resentment. Apraku believes that differences in their backgrounds account for the animosity. One, the black American, has been the product of enslavement, racism, oppression, and humiliation; the other, the African, was not.86 This distinction is not necessarily true of present-day African migrants, however. The African migrant of today appears to black Americans to be in a "favored" situation with whites, and not subjected to the degree and intensity of the racism and degradation that the black American experiences. This "favored" treatment is short-lived, however. According to Apraku, as soon as the situation of the African improves and he begins to mani-fest a desire to become domiciled here, and goes after a share of the American dream, "he is no longer African but Black and must be treated as such. He is now exposed to precisely the problems and experiences of black Americans. He becomes the victim of discriminatory policies and derogatory remarks."87 Put differently, after a time, the African becomes exposed to the same negative experiences as the black American. He is no longer shielded from racism and other discriminatory experiences. "When it comes to racism in the United States," Apraku contends, "a real racist makes no distinction between black Africans, Black Americans, or black Caribbean. To the racist, black is black, whether made in frica, Amrica or the Caribbean/' 88 The thrust of this paper is not to nullify the Pan-African and identity para-digms. Though it is difficult for a revamped Pan-African movement to become concrete under present circumstances, the Pan-African spirit is presently kept alive by organizations such as PAMUSA and RandaJl Robinson's Washington, D.C.-based black lobbying group, TransAfrica. They remain testimonies to the fact that though a movement in the od tradition may presently seem inconceivable, organizations and individuis can still function to perpetate Pan-African vales, and advance the interests of African and peoples of African descent abroad. This can continu while acknowledging the problematic of both the Pan-African and identity paradigms, and working diligently to confront and deaJ with the myriad and complex problems.

5 Kofi K. Apraku, Outside Looking In: An African Perspective on American Pluralistic Society (Wcstport, Conn., 1996), 112.
86 87 88

Ibid., 113. Ibid., 114. Ibid., 115.